A link between the medical arts and the art of poetry has long been observed. Philadelphia, in particular, has played host to a long line of distinguished doctors who were also poets. Most readers are aware of William Carlos Williams, who studied at another nearby medical institution in the city. Beside Williams stand several other Philadelphia medical men of letters, and they all have the distinction of having been alumni and faculty of Thomas Jefferson University.
(click to enlarge)
|
|
S. Weir Mitchell, engraving by T. Johnson, after a painting by Frank Holl, 1891.
|
The first and most famous of these poet doctors is Silas Weir Mitchell (JMC 1850). He grew up in a distinguished household in Virginia, and his father called both Edgar Allen Poe and Oliver Wendell Holmes literary friends. This rich family life must have nurtured the young Mitchell, who went on to become the Father of American Neurology as well as one of the 19th century's most successful creative authors.
Mitchell was regarded as a major novelist of his time, one accomplished enough to be viewed as peer and equal of Samuel "Mark Twain" Clemens. The novel was also Mitchell’s most popular form with the readers of his day (his novel Hugh Wynne sold over 500,000 copies), but he also published several well-received collections of poetry and tales for children.
Mitchell's poetry deserves increased attention. His poems are innovative in form and content. He frequently valued brevity in his poems and shared a passionate interest in the art of painting, a subject more commonly associated with late 20th century poets such as Frank O'Hara and John Ashbery. The poems "After Ruysdael," "Milan (Da Vinci's Christ)," and "Near Amsterdam" reveal a photographic eye that could, with poetic language, transform a complex, two-dimensional image into a clear, three-dimensional scene in the mind's eye of a reader. For example:
After Albert Cuyp
A sunset silence holds the patient land;
Against the sun the stolid cattle stand;
Framed hazy, in the gold that slips
Between the sails of lazy ships,
And floods with level, yellow light
That broad, green meadow grasses bright.
(click to enlarge)
|
|
John Chalmers DaCosta as a resident at “Blockley” Philadelphia Hospital (seated far left), 1885.
|
This is a poem remarkable for its overt economy, its lyrical beauty, and its structural ingenuity. These three couplets, one in iambic pentameter followed by two in trochaic tetrameter, when presented on the page, even approximate the rectangular shape of a painting hung upon a museum wall.
All poets follow different paths, and some, like Emily Dickinson, remain little known in life. Such was the case with John Chalmers Da Costa (JMC 1885), who was the distinguished Samuel D. Gross professor of surgery between 1910 and 1933. He was a poet, too, yet this fact did not become well known until after his death. This story is an interesting one. His body of work was discovered and came to be published through the efforts of the third major Jefferson medicine man of letters, Frederick E. Keller (JMC 1917).
Keller had already published two successful collections of poetry: Hospital Ballads and Four Leaf Clover Series. He was also a devoted follower of Da Costa the doctor. Keller acquired the opportunity to celebrate both the doctor and the poet after the late surgeon's widow sent Keller a poem in reply to an article Keller was writing and eventually published as "Da Costa – Man and Genius" in the student's section of the Journal of the American Medical Association. Next came the publication of the collected Poems Of John Chalmers Da Costa in 1942, which included his last poetic words:
Moonbeams
Each sweet flower drinking dew
And the dancing sunbeams, grew
From the seed to blushing rose,
Sweet of breath, with graceful pose
So my love from seeing you
And your heart's warm sunshine, grew,
Opened soul, and bared of heart,
To your eyes in every part.
We can see each other's hearts,
See the wounds of Cupid's darts,
Let our love with incense breath,
Mix as roses, unto death.
And when Death shall claim his own,
And shall take us to his home,
Let the memory of our love,
Linger, moonbeams from above.
Da Costa wrote in the preface to his Poems that “the real poet is at home in the city.” His residence at 2045 Walnut Street in Center City was as much within the hustle and bustle of Philadelphia during his time as that location is today. This urban energy might explain how the busy professor of surgery could find the time to write such poems as the ambitious, five-part “Human Life,” which grapples with the weighty themes of evolution, polygeneity, and the “True & False Meaning of Society.”
Doctor Da Costa’s poetic advocate, Doctor Keller, appears to have had a lifelong love of poetry that bordered on obsession. His silver anniversary biography in the 1942 issue of the Clinic lists just one hobby – POETRY – and his poetry collections take an equal place beside his "Medical Papers" under the heading PUBLICATIONS.
Much of Keller's verse is light, yet full of insight. The poems in his two collections accumulate weight when read as a whole and together draw a vivid, lively picture of the medical life during the first half of the 20th century in America. His is a poetry of keen social observation infused with a judicious amount of wit. This human condition is no better illustrated than in the following poem from Hospital Ballads:
A Man Of Letters
The P.R.N. took the T.P.R.
And gave the tonic T.I.D.
Some C.C. pills and S.S.E.
Took the B.P. – B.I.D.
Made him gargle q. 4 h.,
Gave M.S. upon that day,
Took him to the O.R. too,
Just to have a T. & A.
This poem continues to resonate in our contemporary, postmodern, digital world with its dizzying amount of acronyms, proving that poetry, like medicine, is a living, growing art.
Here is a partial list of literary titles authored by JMC alumni and faculty that are included in the Special Collections of the University Archives:
John Chalmers Da Costa
Poems Of John Chalmers Da Costa. Dorrance And Company. Philadelphia, PA. 1942.
Frederick E. Keller
Four Leaf Clover Series. Dorrance And Company. Philadelphia, PA. 1933.
Hospital Ballads. Williams Brothers. Frankford, Philadelphia, PA. 1932.
Jerry Labriola
Murders At Brent Institute. Strong Books. Avon, CT. 2003.
Silas Weir Mitchell
Hugh Wynne. The Century Co. New York, NY. 1909.
Philip Vernon. The Century Co. New York, NY. 1895.
The Collected Poems. The Century Co. New York, NY 1896.
The Comfort Of The Hills. The Century Co. New York, NY. 1910.
The Cup Of Youth. Houghton, Mifflin And Company. Boston And New York. 1889.
The Hill Of Stones. Houghton, Mifflin And Company. Boston, MA. 1883.
The Mother. Houghton, Mifflin And Company. Boston, MA. 1893.
The Wager. The Century Co. New York, NY. 1900.
